sga_santa is a Secret Santa exchange for the Stargate Atlantis fandom. This is my first year participating (since I just spent this past year getting caught up on the series), and sadly, the last year the exchange is being run. It had a good run of 10 years. And given the turnout for it's closing night performance, it certainly ended strong. I wrote my first dialogue-only fic as my gift, and it was well received (and a LOT of fun to right). My first foray into writing SGA fic, but I have a feeling it won't be my last.

Anyway, my gift was Consequences by the ever-fabulous tarlanx. She and I have collaborated a several times now on various big bangs, and I LOVE her writing style (and she's also a very talented artist). The story is deliciously angsty, both from the action of the plot and the internal conflicts of the characters. I highly recommend it if you are a McShep fan.

multifan_gift was another new exchange for me this year, mostly because it allowed both fic and art to be given as gifts. My receipient requested wallpapers, and picked Game of Thrones as one of the fandoms. I had a lot of fun making my gift, stretching my artistic muscles.

In return, I got a fabulous Walking Dead fic AND fanmix! Shards of the Mind by dunderklumpen is Carol-centric with a side of Daryl/Carol (which I ship SO HARD). I love character studies, and Carol has such a rich and angst-filled backstory that presents so many possibilities. This one touches on a lot of aspects of her struggles, and how Daryl fills in the small cracks of her life. And a fanmix! I love mixes, and this one has a lot of great songs that really bring the feelz. And the images for the covers are A-MAZING.

This was my fourth year doing yuletide, probably the biggest and best-known fanfic exchange. Last year, however, was very disappointing. I got matched to someone and hit on two fandoms. However, his likes/dislikes for stories was pretty much diametrically opposed to what I like to write. Still, I wrote something that fit his request, which was received with very lukewarm feedback. I wrote two other stories last year—a pinch hit and a madness treat—and felt very accomplished with what I'd done. Then I got my gift. Ugh. The person paid no attention whatsoever to my likes/dislikes and basically, gave me a lump of coal. Still, I tried to be optimistic and participate again. Only to get matched to the SAME GUY as my recipient again. I almost defaulted immediately (and should have). But I soldiered on, thinking I could still do this. Well, it never gelled, and I ended up defaulting at the last minute. Which I feel awful about, and will make me ineligible to participate next year unless I write something for the New Years Resolution collection before next signup.

And then I got my own gift. I was a little concerned, because I saw my own name come across the pinch-hit list (which means my original author defaulted). But OMG, was it an awesome gift. Night Terrors by flyakate is a Grimm case-fic that is so well done, it could easily be an episode. The guys encounter a new type of Wesen, and have to figure out how to take it down. Receiving such a fantastic gift made me feel even more guilty about having defaulted, but then I decided I would consider it payback for last year. :)

So all in all, it was a good holiday in my fandom world. Thanks to all my thoughtful, talented authors and artists!

Title: Give Me StrengthAuthor: Gryph (gryphon2k)Recipient:syndelarPairing: McKay/SheppardRating/Category: PG-13, hurt/comfort, established relationshipWord Count: 1411Disclaimer: Not mine, wish they were.Author's Notes: Written for the sga_santa fanfic exchange. I wanted to try an experiment writing a dialogue-only fic. Hopefully it will amuse.Summary: McKay and Sheppard crash on an unknown planet. Both are injured, and need to stay awake until help can arrive. This is what that conversation might look like.

Title: Daenerys and Arya Art for multifan_gift exchangeArtist: Gryph (gryphon2k)Recipient:x_disturbed_xFandom: Game of ThronesCharacters/Pairings: Arya Stark, Daenerys TargaryenRating/Category: PG/GenWarnings: noneSummary: My receipient for the multifan_gift exchange asked for wallpaper and something that focuses on Arya and Daenerys. So I made a set of two wallpapers, one for each woman. And as a bonus, I threw in a fanmix, just because I think Arya is awesome.

First, thank you for whatever gift you might leave in my stocking! And if you came here considering writing a treat, you are a special kind of awesome. Here are some things that might help you decide what you'd like to write.

General details: I think I'm pretty open to just about anything. I like gen, I like slash of all varieties (feel free to get as explicit as you like). I am good with kinks of any sort. I'm not real fond of AUs or crossovers unless they are well justified in a way that is consistent. No PWP, please. If you'd like to see the types of things I write, I'm on AO3 as Gryph. The biggest thing to know about me is that I'm a total angst-puppy. I love hurt/comfort stories, physical or psychological torture, anything that rips the character apart then puts him or her back together with maybe a few pieces missing. Happy endings are not required by any means. The most important thing to me is to maintain character integrity. I love snappy banter, twisty plots that make me go "aha!", and dry wit. But if you aren't into writing angst-fests, that's okay, too. I like backstories, missing scenes, and WHN. Really, so many of these fandoms have so LITTLE written in them that anything would be a treasured gem.

Well, spn_reversebang ultimately decided that they were not going to let people dual register as authors and artists. But they say they really need artists much more than authors.

So this year, I decided I would do art. I've never done art for a reverse bang before, but the stuff I've done for big bangs seems to have been well received. And I'm starting to get some real confidence in my Photoshop Mad Skillz(TM) and the quality of my manips. I'm a bit nervous about putting my art out there for people to pick as a writing prompt, but here goes nothin'. I've submitted one piece already; they have an early bird deadline where if you submit your first piece before 10/20, you can submit a second one by 10/27. I'm going to try to get a second one done for that deadline.

Sadly, I can't post the art anywhere until it's been chosen as a prompt by an artist, because it's all supposed to be done anonymously. But I'm getting seriously excited.

spn_reversebang first has art prompts created and then writers sign up to write those stories. I've done this one for the last two years, and this year they are considering allowing dual sign-ups. If that happens, I'm hoping to submit at least one art prompt as well.

sga_santa, a secret Santa fanfic exchange in the Stargate Atlantis fandom. This is the tenth year of the challenge and my first participating. Sadly, it will also be the last year they run it, so I'm hoping to make the most of it!

yuletide! Well, signups haven't started quite yet, but people are starting to brainstorm what fandoms they want to nominate for the exchange. This will be my fourth year participating, and it is one of my absolute FAVORITE fanfiction exchanges.

And finally, smallfandombang. I've participated one way or another in this one since its inception; this will be the fourth round, and I'm hoping to do both writing and art again this year.

That should keep me out of trouble for the fall and winter....

Other bangs I'm hoping to do next year are the deancasbigbang, the scifibigbang, maybe apocalypsebang. Sadly after this last disappointing round of mpregbigbang, I don't think I'll be doing art for that anymore; both times now, I've had authors who ended up blowing off their assigned posting dates, and left me hanging to provide art for stories that had no completed draft forthcoming (and in one case, never got posted at all). And someday, I still want to get the twd_reversebang (Walking Dead) off the ground.

So, when I became seneschal of Quintavia (for my non-SCA friends, the president of my local chapter), one of the dreams I had was that at camping events, members of the Shire attending would camp together as a group at an event. This past weekend, we came pretty darn close to accomplishing that. We had a camp of 17 people, three of which joined us from our neighboring group Bergental (including the Baron and Baroness, so we called the camp Bergentavia, lol). And It. Was. Awesome.

This was my first time being "campmaster" for a large-ish camp, being in charge of the meal plan, being the first to arrive on site midday Friday and reserving a space for the rest of the folks who trickled in (our last group arrived Saturday morning after a trip to an ER waylaid them Friday, and the last tent *just* fit in the last open space we'd saved for them). calygrey was my tentmate and traveling companion, and she was invaluable in figuring out the camp layout and how much space we needed. We convoyed up with chrystie69, who was our "pick up the things we forgot on her way back and forth from her hotel to the site" person.

The B&B of Bergental shared a carport shelter with us for our main dining hall/common area, but the other goal I have as seneschal is to bring the Shire's equipment for having their own encampment up to snuff. We just acquired a three-burner high-output camp stove from a returning member who had no use for it, and my next acquisition is going to be some serious sets of cooking pots and pans (we have a good number of serving pieces for indoor events with kitchens, but no actual cooking pieces), and a better large shelter. The Shire purchased a 10x20 popup type thing about 8 years ago (the last time we had a real Shire camp), but it has not held up well. It was nice in that it was not much bigger than two popups when stored, and very easy to transport. But we are going to try to do a fundraiser to purchase one of these carport things, because they are REALLY durable, and very easy to put up and take down. They are a little more bulky to store and transport, but we have plans for that as well.

Anyway, I think the camp experience was about 95% successful. I did learn a lot, have a list of things I need to bring/do differently next time, but the general consensus among the camp was that they would like to do it again next year! And that we need to sponsor a party like some of the other big camps there do. We sorta/kinda had a large-ish gathering Friday night with a big fire, a cooler full of jello shots, camp pies, and the B&B did a little bardic, but I'm sure they would have loved to do more. There is a Baconpalooza party Friday night, a pinata party Saturday night, and the thoughts among the camp was that we should have a "jello shots" party! Bwahahaha.

Oh, and we are now going to have about a half-dozen Quintavians in the Bergental camp at Pennsic. I may thing about bringing the Quintavia banner and ask if we can put it up somewhere in camp. Oh, speaking of banners, my new tent and my new banner made their debut at GNEW. We had a little snafu putting up the tent (and bent the pins on the upright supports for the ridge pole, so that will be getting fixed at Workshop Night this week), but I think I know what went wrong and it should go smoother at Pennsic. We put up white_and_nrdy's tent of the same design up without any problems just a couple of hours later. But the tent was faboo, and should be great for me and Spare Boy. I think I'm going to get two sets of plastic drawers, though, for us to use for dressers/beside tables/suitcases instead of the footlockers we used last year. And I want to put up some hook things in the frame to hang stuff like hats and quivers and maybe the lanterns.

Both my boys' birthdays were this past weekend. My oldest, The Boog, turned 20 on Sunday. My younger, The Eepster, turned 15 on Monday. I posted embarrassing pictures of them as newborns on FB. At least I didn't use the full frontal one of the younger boy, so I did show some restraint, lol. But it was also weird to see me 15 and 20 years ago with long, curly dark hair and being so much heavier. One thing I will say, I did love post-pregnancy hair. Thick and curly and not at all frizzy even though it was the height of summer humidity. But my boys were *the* most photogenic babies. Boog especially, had these big fat baby cheeks and cherubic face.

Anyway, Saturday was the celebration day; E's friend who has been in the hospital came with us to go see a movie (Maleficent), lunch at Red Robin, and then present shopping at Best Buy. E was desperately in need of a new computer; his old one was running XP, and we are getting to the point where stuff he wants/needs for school or fun won't run well or at all on it anymore. I was looking into Chromebooks, since most of what he does is online, but turns out that his Kindle Fire would be more useful as a computer! Chrombooks can't download anything, can't do anything if they aren't connected to the internet. P.O.S! So I splurged and got him an inexpensive (ha!) HP laptop. My Dad and Sis are going to chip in to help pay for it as their presents to him as well, so that helps a lot. The Boog, who has a MacBook Pro, got a gift card to Amazon.

Speaking of family (and I use the term loosely, ahem), my darling spouse's parents seem to have decided that their religious-based bigotry that they are showing toward their transgender child also extends to my children (who they, up until this point, have been *so proud* to call their grandchildren). We have not heard one peep out of them to even call the boys to wish them happy birthday. Yeah. I am SO done with them. At least my boys are old enough to realize that it isn't them or anything they did; they understand that grandma and grandpa are just assclowns about some things.

E got another bday present of another sort, though; he got his braces off! On his birthday! The orthodontist's office is pretty cool; they give the kids a goody bag of "forbidden foods" that they can't eat while they have the braces on, and because it was E's bday, they gave him an extra goody of a gift card for ice cream. He is free until Thursday, when he has to go back in to get his retainers. But he only needs to wear them while he's not in school, so he's happy about that. And he got clear ones, so even when they are in, they will barely be noticeable.

The other (fur)kids had their annual physicals yesterday, too. Both of them have lost about 3 lbs in the last year, so the whole cutting back on their food that they have been MEGA unhappy about has really helped. Both are now about at their ideal weights, so we need to keep and eye on things and may need to actually adjust their food *upward* to make sure they don't keep losing. The vet did blood work on both of them (they are 7 and 11 now, so the older one is a "senior" and the younger is getting close), and once that comes back, we are going to talk about options to try to get the older one to stop chewing her fur off. It is most likely neurotic behavior, but we want to rule out allergy or illness of any sort (fleas have already been ruled out, not that I thought it was). The vet is new to the practice, and is big on protecting against kidney and liver issues in cats as they grow older, thus the blood work. Made for an expensive visit, but worth keeping the little ones healthy. We may have to resort to some sort of anti-anxiety med for the older one, but the vet is very conservative when it comes to drugs, so we'll see what he has to say.

This is my other piece of art for the spn_bigpretzel Spring Fanfic Exchange. The story is a SPN/Downton Abbey fusion, and Maggie Smith's Dowager Duchess has a big part in it, so of course, she had to be there. I found a great pic of a couple of guys in white tie that fit the profiles of the Winchesters, so I blended their heads onto the bodies. The text I did in the DA font (complete with mirror image), and also added some decorative Victorian floral corners for good measure. A little futzing with the color (more to mask the differences between all the sources), and it was done. I'm really happy with the expression of the guys and how well it looks like their heads were there all along, lol.

The story was written by phebemarie for sylvia_locust (who I had a great time doing the Family Feud art for last year).

Summary: Dean finds an enchanted wardrobe in the Batcave. The Wardrobe doesn't just lead to Narnia, but to a variety of children's book worlds. Dean loves playing around in there, but there just might be someone else who needs it more.

Notes: I found a screencap from the bunker that I loved, especially the expressions of the guys. Then found a pic of the Narnia wardrobe with it open, and put a picture from the Whoville set (made a little extra trippy with vibrance filters and plastic wrap effect) inside the open wardrobe.

Today is the posting date for the last story I worked on for smallfandombang. In addition to my own story that I wrote, I did art for 3 other stories. The other authors were all great to work with, and I loved making banners and mixes for all of them.

This Big Bang is my absolute favorite to do, and this is my third year participating. In Round 1, I wrote a PotA story, and although I was sad that I didn't finish my Space: 1999 story for Round 2 last year, I was thrilled that I still got to participate as an artist. This year, for Round 3, I finally managed to be both an author and an artist! Many, many thanks to spikedluv for running this fabulous challenge, and I can't wait for Round 4!

Title: Groundhog DayArtist: Gryph (gryphon2k)Author: Missy (rise_your_dead)Fandom: The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.Characters/Pairings: Brisco, Bowler, Lenore, Dixie, Comet, the Swill BrothersRating/Category: Gen/GWarnings: none for the artSummary: Art for smallfandombang story. When Bowler and Brisco split up to take care of a government-related mission Bowler bumps into an old flame and Brisco discovers the Swill Brothers hog-tied to a tree…in their longjohns. The radioactive gophers recently escaped from Wickwire’s laboratory are soon the least of their problems…

Title: The Lies That They Gave You, Chapter 3Author: Gryph (gryphon2k)Artist: Tarlan (tarlanx)Fandom: Planet of the Apes (TV)Characters/Pairings: Pete Burke/OFC, Alan Virdon, Galen, Sally Virdon, Chris VirdonRating/Category: Rated R, Het slashGenre: action, homecomingWord Count: 3,129 (11,338 total)Warnings: off-screen tortureSummary: When the astronauts and Galen find a way to return to Earth of the past, things don't go quite the way they had hoped. And things are not quite what they seem.Notes: Written for smallfandombang. Many thanks to kassidy62 as always for being my beta-reader, cheerleader, and fellow PotA nut. I was also thrilled that tarlanx chose to do some beautiful art for my story.

Title: The Lies That They Gave You, Chapter 1Author: Gryph (gryphon2k)Artist: Tarlan (tarlanx)Fandom: Planet of the Apes (TV)Characters/Pairings: Pete Burke/OFC, Alan Virdon, Galen, Sally Virdon, Chris VirdonRating/Category: Rated R, Het slashGenre: action, homecomingWord Count: 3,999 (11,338 total)Warnings off-screen tortureSummary: When the astronauts and Galen find a way to return to Earth of the past, things don't go quite the way they had hoped. And things are not quite what they seem.Notes: Written forsmallfandombang. Many thanks to kassidy62 as always for being my beta-reader, cheerleader, and fellow PotA nut. I was also thrilled that tarlanx chose to do some beautiful art for my story.

Title: The Lies That They Gave You, Chapter 1Author: Gryph (gryphon2k)Artist: Tarlan (tarlanx)Fandom: Planet of the Apes (TV)Characters/Pairings: Pete Burke/OFC, Alan Virdon, Galen, Sally Virdon, Chris VirdonRating/Category: Rated R, Het slashGenre: action, homecomingWord Count: 3,341 (11,338 total)Warnings off-screen tortureSummary: When the astronauts and Galen find a way to return to Earth of the past, things don't go quite the way they had hoped. And things are not quite what they seem.Notes: Written for smallfandombang. Many thanks to kassidy62 as always for being my beta-reader, cheerleader, and fellow PotA nut. I was also thrilled that tarlanx chose to do some beautiful art for my story.

There are several people in my life right now who deserve this song. Some of them are being incredibly Brave, dealing with things that are so hard, I can't help be immensely proud to know them.( Brave )

Title: Vita AethelstaniArtist: Gryph (gryphon2k)Author: Oneiriad (oneiriad)Fandom: VikingsCharacters/Pairings: Athelstan/Ragnar LothbrokRating/Category: PG-13/SlashWarnings: skin, but nothing that couldn't be shown in publicSummary: Art for smallfandombang story. The young monk Athelstan was sent to the North as part of a mission, to spread the word of God. Alas, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and he ended up enslaved and abused by the heathens.In the late autumn, Ragnar Lothbrok finds a runaway slave in the forest and decides to keep him. Gradually, Athelstan comes to trust Ragnar, even to love him. But come spring, to Athelstan's horror, Ragnar leads a raid across the ocean to England - and Athelstan's guilt only grows when Ragnar returns with not just gold and silver, but Christian captives.

Title: Five Easy Steps to Falling in LoveArtist: Gryph (gryphon2k)Author: Severina (severina2001)Fandom: Live Free or Die HardCharacters/Pairings: Matt/JohnRating/Category: G/SlashWarnings: none for storySummary: Art for smallfandombang story. The steps to falling in love are pretty standard. A couple meets, goes on a few dates, gets to know each other. They spend time together. There is some hand-holding, some snuggling, kisses that progress to more carnal pursuits. Eventually, they realize that they want to spend the rest of their lives together.But when you meet your other half on a wild ride across the country chasing terrorists who are trying to destroy America's infrastructure, it follows that the courtship process might evolve a little... differently. The hand-holding might involve mutant rats, for example (at least, it does if you think like Matthew Farrell.) The cuddling may just include rope and a few bad guys (because you're John McClane, and it follows that you get to that stage of the relationship on a holiday.)The road to true love doesn't always run quite as smoothly as one would hope -- but John and Matt will get there.